The Rauhnaechte, or, the pagan bardo between Christmas and The Epiphany

New Grange, Ireland, and the Winter Solstice dagger of light. As  a dear friend of mine said, one may know what lies within only by going in, otherwise, there is little to talk about. Talking about such things trivializes them and renders them obsolete. The invitation is to experience them, to enter the darkness with a full heart and a willingness to be emptied. The unknown gift of the return of the light and the ability to read the signs in our lives. Here is the opening to the womb of the dark, in which the birth of light is participated in, celebrated, known.

 The spiral brings us also back in on our selves, back into the center point, the dark point, the, as my tai chi teacher said, apparent closure, and leads us out again into openness, light, and birth. Sunwise, moonwise, earthwise, turning, turning, turning. Celebrating the wheel of the year, the ever spiralling time of a year's cycle through the seasons, through the dark and into the light.

Being here in Germany at this time, I notice two things very strongly. Firstly, because my childhood memories are not from this place of food, family, traditions of gift giving and time spent together, and because I am not christian in belief or practice, I am left rather empty about the experience of christmas going on around me. Which is not to say that I do not value the traditions of my German family and the time spent together. I do value those experiences very much. But, I am aware that underneath the current enjoyment, there is a rather large space of non-meaning, a hole of dark, which is absolutely in order for the season. And, I notice myself also searching, reaching, longing, as always, for depth of meaning, ancient knowing, human truth hidden in mindless rituals that stay on the surface. From an email with a friend: christmas is such an interesting thing. i agree with a- about the commercialism, and i know you actually do too (though you love shopping!). it doesn't have anything to do with the meaning of christmas. i am not a practicing christian, but i was raised from the time i was 8 to 16 going to church, so i know the traditions and the meaning. It is just that it is lost on me. i think of the return of the light with the solstice and the birth of the sun as the natural reality of this time that is seen through the lense of the christian story of jesus. But every religion and faith has some winter time festival of light. The darkest days of the year are upon us and we as humans always celebrate the return of the light, the movement towards spring, the rebirth of our life for one more year. and i think coming together, and feasting, and lighting candles and cooking traditional foods and sharing time together is really important. And the symbols of the time are important- christmas trees, stars, if one is religious the creche and the story of jesus. And it is a time for looking back at the year and being grateful for what we have and looking ahead with possibility. just because there is also a commercial buying overlay doesn't mean we have to give up the deeper meaning.


The second thing I notice very strongly, is the dark. It is very very dark here. We have for 3 months about 8 hours of light per day. And most of those days are rainy. And this year, there is very little snow, a lot of rain, and it is weirdly warm for the season of year. This darkness explains why in this western/northern hemisphere culture, the big stories are based on the fight of the light, or good, and the dark, or evil. Because it is such a tangible thing to be submersed in darkness. And while the darkness is, as a former teacher said, fruitful, it is also, at a survival level, untenable. We are, like plants, built to seek the light and the warmth. We know in our bones and guts that light means life and dark means death. Why else would we think of intentionally built archeoastronomical mounds/caves as graves rather than ceremonial places of great transformation? We confuse transformation with death all of the time. And the great possibility and hope of the return of the light, the promise of warmth and new life, is as powerful an image as we humans can recognize.


Having just passed through the darkest night and the great pageant of christmas, now between the Rauhnaechten- the 12 days "of christmas" or the 12 days between december 25 and january 6, (which the church has overlaid with christian symbolism), are the days when spirits move along the earth. It is important to stay home, to stay warm and careful during these 12 days and nights. Fights, sicknesses, strange weather, are all signs of the spirits afoot. Each day is said to be a portend for the month for which it stands- the first day being january, the second day, february, and so on. Much to think about in these times and days. So much to integrate, signs to read and understand, the new life to welcome and the old one to let go of. I suppose, as they do every year, these days between Christmas and New Year's cause me to grow philosophical, to look for meaning and depth, to "go inward" as we used to say at the Zen center. There truly is a lot of darkness here- so little daylight and so many grey clouds. And it causes me to reflect on the darkness within us as a species, and the light within us. The ability to make meaning, to tell stories, to make beauty, to love.

coming into the close of the year

One can see that I am not a writer. I come to this blog sporadically, when either the mood strikes me or the time allows. I would actually like to write more, but I seem to always pack my life full of things to do. Sometimes, these things are wonderful, inspiring, and nourishing. Other times, I seem to to be so busy I am barely at home with no time to cook and I have no idea, other than work, what I have done that day. And I only work a half time job. Granted, looking for houses and driving all around the Hochtaunus takes time. And driving to my parent's in law and spending the night. But, for example, I seem to have had very little time for studying herbs (exactly none) since August.

We are not really any closer to finding "the house", but we have really learned a lot about what we don't want and what we do. For example we know now that we want about half an acre of land for the house/garden itself with a barn, and then we need to rent/buy about 2 acres to have our imaginary but hopefully later very real 8-10 sheep on a rotational grazing style pasture.

I am reading Marie de Brebis: the rich sound of the simple life (in German!!!) by Christian Signol. Marie told her life story to Christian two years before she died and he published it as a book. In the southern mountains of France, she was found in 1901  by a Shepherd in the middle of his herd of sheep with a note that her name was Marie. She grew up as a shepard, married, had children, lived through two wars, healed people with her hands, made bread, and kept always her beautiful devotion, her joy in life, and her great loving open heart. She is my new heroine and I definitely want to be her when I grow up. That is to say, she has realized the vow that I also have, to love all beings, and lives a truly handmade life, steeped in her culture and her community and her time.

After her lambs are born and she watches them jump around, she says "The animals are born far more mature than the human child. We are not so superior to them, as is often thought. When people were a little humbler and wiser, they would study the life of plants and animals more closely.But people often have crazy ideas to rush forwards without knowing why, without taking the time to look at themselves. And in spring, when the grass begins to grow between the stones, one can learn more than from all the smartest machines. But who thinks of these things anymore?"

 Now comes the weeks before Christmas, a holiday which I celebrate obliquely and more pagan than christian (tree, presents, food, candles, Winter solstice/"rebirth" of the Sun), going along for the ride, as it were, on the coattails of st. nick. And so I have started baking, of course, and making hand made christmas presents- felt stars for christmas ornaments and nets of stars for wall decorations, a vest hopefully for nic, if I can pull it off, jam, candied ginger, membrillo (quince paste), chutneys, etc. We have our tree already, but won't put it up till next week. Christmas markets are in full swing, which accentuate two things about christmas- its non-stop all-out consumeristic frenzy of shopping, and its non-stop, all-out gathering of people in the dark of the year to drink, eat, and be together. Which is really what the time is about. Marie knew that, what it means to live depending on neighbors and friends helping each other through the year, and celebrating the festivals and feast days through the year to dance, eat, sing, and celebrate the crazy beautiful joy of being alive and the gratefulness of living though the whole cycle of the year, one more time.

Artisan Food

Artisanal food makers- bread bakers, pastry makers, cheese makers, and others- are specialists and have access to the freshest ingredients.

Food artisans craft their wares in a special, artful way. Their foods are made in small batches by skilled hands. Artisans bring a tremendous amount of learning and experience to their craft, made manifest in each loaf of bread or each round of cheese. Their works are the product of passion and pride, not just commerce.

True artisanal foods reveal the hand of the maker, since they are crafted in a uniquely individual way. For example, a baker may bake black olive loaves, but each one will vary a bit in size or shape, be a bit bumpier from the dispersal of olives, or be less than perfectly rounded- a sign that human hands have been at work.

This touch of life is what makes the loaf of bread, the round of cheese eloquent and expressive- attributes that are unattainable in mass-produced foods.

Viana La Place Unplugged Kitchen


I work in a small cafe connected with the shop of a Biodynamic Farm. Here, farmers often supplement their income by selling either products from their own farm- eggs, milk, cheeses, vegetables, meat- and/or by having a small organic foods store where they sell the full range of groceries from cereals to bread to cheese to vegetables, frozen pizzas and so forth, albeit on a small scale.

I bake cakes, which to the Germans are almost holy, for the shop, twice a week- on thursdays and fridays. I am not yet at the level of artisanal mastery that Viana speaks of, in terms of excellence and experience. My cakes are, however, hand formed and hand made, coming from my wish to make something beautiful and nourishing. They take time to create and I am still working out the details or experimenting with the recipes. Like learning the language if German, I also have to learn the recipes. For sure these last things are too much for my employer. She is of the just get it done fast and efficiently, and make it reproducible so that it is the same each time, mind set. I do understand that a person wants to be able to go to a cafe and eat the same cake they had last week and have it taste as good as it did then, but I also understand, as Viana says, that sometimes the olives are lumped together, or the shape is not quite round. These are the things that are actually alive about what I make.

One of my favorite parts of the job is making something for lunch that day for the people working there. What I don't want to do as a cook is to make large amounts of food for nameless large masses of people. A few cakes a day, a quiche and a pizza, and then either a pasta dish and a salad or a soup and bread or a casserole of some kind are simple to do. Sitting and eating together make us connected as a community of people working together and make our work something different than working at, say, Stop and Shop, or its equivalent here in Germany. I am the sort of cook who would rather invite people over for dinner, and spend the day cooking for them, than put something together as quickly as possible so i can get on to something else.

My boss and I have such a hard time understanding one another because we differ on the ground philosophy of how food should be prepared and enjoyed. A cake, like everything made from scratch and by hand, takes time to prepare and bake, time to cool, ice, and serve. And how it comes out of the oven and how it tastes and how fluffy or dense it is, depends on many factors. For an apple cake, for example, it matters which kinds of apples one uses, and it matters whether they are peeled or not, or poached, or steamed or shredded, or cut, or raw, or sliced. It matters which sort of dough one uses- and there are so many more kinds of cake batters and dough recipes here than in the U.S. Over there, we have regular cakes, where one creams together butter and sugar and so forth, pies, angel food cake, and that's about it. And there are so many more kinds here.

But the real issue at hand here is not which cakes are being baked and by whom, and how long it takes to bake them, but the continuing question of how to remain loving, remain open, in difficult situations. In a relationship with two very different sorts of people, with very different conversation styles and personalities and ideas about food. In situations, as my tai chi teacher said, of apparent closure. The opportunity to love, to turn towards love, is always present. And what better way for me, than through baking and cooking.

Towards a Food Culture

A culture of Food is the living relationship with a place. Humans, over hundreds of years, have developed ways of eating that allow them to survive in a place according to what grows there. Eating what thrives in a place allows us as animals also to thrive. We learned what not to eat because it is poisonous and we learned how to prepare foods so that by cooking them or preparing them in certain ways or in certain combinations, we are able to receive the most nourishment out of them. And accordingly, as this was passed down mother to daughter, the ways of cooking and preparing what is locally abundant became a culture, a way of eating that when looked at as a whole, epitomizes a culture and its relationship to place. Think of Mexican food, Thai food, Italian food, Japanese food. Greek food.

We were in Greece, and it was absolutely extraordinarily beautiful and wonderful. And part of why it was so stunning- apart from amazing sunny weather, warm ocean water for swimming, Tai Chi and Chi Gong every day for 6 hours, and friends- is that the food was not only completely delicious, the food culture came from there. Being an Island, it is easier to keep one's food culture intact without the press of fast food and corn syrup breathing quite so steeply down one's neck.

We ate mussels with ouzo and dill-feta cheese sauce, sundried- grilled Mackerel, tzatziki, dolmades, bread with sesame seeds all over it, wine, ouzo, sun-dried grape wine, Greek salad, cooked chicory greens, spinach, grilled lamb, baklava and on and on. Everything was in season, delicious, and came out of the food traditions of that place. I wanted to eat Greece into my belly and bring it home- I bought salt, sage, thyme, oregano, olive oil, and stuffed grape leaves to bring home. And then, when I got here, I recreated as many of the meals as I could. But it tasted different. Being here, one needs to eat things from here. Maybe not all the time- it is still fun to go out to an Italian or Thai restaurant once in a while. Bt i notice, that I want to eat the things that grow here and that come from here. I don't cook, for example, the way I did in New Mexico, because I learned the food that was traditional there to eat.  Now, I am learning what is traditional for here.

For example, corn, beans, squash, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, are all "New World" plants, meaning they come from the American Continent (north and south). Fava beans, lentils, grains, brassicas (the cabbage family), carrots, parsnips, turnips come from here. That doesn't mean I am never going eat a potato or that I won't have tomatoes in my garden next year. But it is an interesting thing to begin to be aware of what belongs here, to this soil. What grows best, how the traditions of cooking come from the things that are indigenous to this place.

I don't know the answer, but I am definitely interested in trying to cook and grow my way into an answer.

Buying a House

or preparing to, is a rather frightening, life altering, enormous, rather disordering thing. Looking through ones finances, which are embarrassingly small and unlooked through, trying to put together a list of what needs to be paid each month, which is a frighteningly huge amount, and trying to keep the garden planning to a bare minimum before I know I am actually going to have one, which is damn near impossible, are all the order of the day. Combined with fighting with my wife, crying at the drop of  a hat, feeling all disturbed and somewhere else most of the time, and in turns not eating and not sleeping (at least they don't occur simultaneously for some reason). I'm a slight mess, as you can probably imagine.

The handmade life and vision of living with the land and plants and animals through the experiments, skills, prayers, and creativity that we can muster up to create beauty in the small piece of earth we call home is about to become one step closer to true. After almost 10 years of dreaming about it, it is possibly going to find root, or seed, and begin to actually grow in the actual earth. I am a slight mess, as you can probably imagine and am taking refuge in making peach pies and plum butter and apple butter and apple cake and apple sauce so that the bounty of this season right now right here does not go to waste.

Oh, and the 25 tomato plants are still doing fine and producing happily. We have three actual eggplants growing and I am going to plant some lettuce. For dinner, I am making tomato-thyme stuffed sourdough flatbread with lebanese Labneh cheese and olive oil cured eggplant tonight. WIth Peach Pie for dessert. So is this life, great huge choices and decisions and then dinner. Trying to build a relationship with the food culture here as well as the food itself and where it comes from. Most preferably, in our backyard, is fraught with both such moments- it is that big and that small, that life changing and that every day. Somehow, we live our lives in the tension between, fighting, playing, making love, making choices, and offering as much beauty to the world as possible.

I'll post pictures of the house when it is ours. Wish us luck!

on some ship, passing through

the next bardo. I woke up somehow, simply, ready, this morning. That is, ready to be an adult in my life and step into this great vision that we were bold enough to dream up and even bolder to now make manifest. Or allow to manifested through us while our butts are getting kicked by the holy. It is a scary thing when all of your dreams are about to come true and anyone who says anything else is either lying or selling something. In any event, I woke up this morning and sat at the altar with the roses and the Picture of Matka Chestechowa (yesterday was her feast day) and felt somehow calm and at peace and ready. Still scared, but willing to do it anyway- start a business of a healing arts center, teach classes, have clients, make herbal medicines, have a garden, a dog, chickens and sheep, and whatever else shows us is needed.

And still, I feel as if I am passing through the Bardo time, the time between. It is only that I've stopped kicking and screaming as I was being dragged into the boat. Or being beaten by Chairon's oar. Chairon is the ferrier across the river Styx. He must be paid by a coin and usually the passage is one way. Unless you are lucky enough to have a second coin, or a golden bough, be a heroine, or to borrow from another myth, a Phoenix. Even though I have no idea which of the options will show up at their appointed time, I now I am sitting calmly, with no idea of where I am being taken, but watching the scenery go by and the journey unfold. At the moment, it is enough to notice that the fear and doubt and overwhelm, is only a mind trick, a moment of freak out that need only be recognized and then, as my friend said the other night, "put where it belongs", to which I replied, "The Compost!"

Schwindelig

Or, dizzy. Which is how I feel. We went to the bank to talk about buying this house and we are not even sure if we want this one. And new jobs are starting and Nic is turning 40, and my sister is getting married, and there is a whole list of things running around in my head and I am frankly, dizzy. And have no appetite, so there will be no foodie posts for the next little while.

What is interesting to me is to think about what a person needs and what for and why. How much land does a person need? Is it important to have one's own land or can one rent it long term with first right of refusal in case the owner decides to sell. And what about a garden? For food? For flowers? For healing herbs? What about a community healing herb garden? But where?

I have the longing for my/our own land and house and the opportunity to grow roots that flower through art, bodywork and healing arts practices, tai chi and chi gong, cooking and being a foodie, gardens of food and healing herbs, a place for gathering, a place to offer performances, maybe, or have musical gatherings and food gatherings, a place to have contact with the natural, unhuman, wild (as wild as possible in western europe outside of the Alps) world, for others to go out into the green and experience Hildegard's Viriditas. And I am fully aware of the sickness of owning things, of consumption and greed in which I was raised. The United States being the prime explosively grand example of humanity's three downfalls, or as the Buddha said, Three Poisons, Greed, Hatred, and Delusion.

And yet, the longing to live such a life, albeit beset by greed and the perilous pitfalls and temptations that lie therein, is actually based on the larger, deeper, older callings of my soul. My soul's call to create a vision of good, of wellbeing, peace and ultimately the expression of Love that we all are and, unhindered by the three aforementioned poisons, freely express and offer as our life energy and life work. The wish is to offer or assist healing in people, the earth, our relationships with other people, with plants, the earth and all elements, our own souls and this wildness we continually attempt to destroy within us.

The question, is this the right house/land/place/crucible for our vision to manifest in its full beauty and entirety in a never before thought or seen way that is bigger than anything we can dream up, is, on the one hand, pointless, in that all places can and are available for such an undertaking because it is our own energy and hands and hearts that make the vision jump up and live. On the other, it is absolutely valid, in that we need, for example, community, clients, friends, fellow foodie marauders dedicated to such a strange underworld path with which we can commune, celebrate, co-create, communicate, and collaborate. And we need the space to do it. And, perhaps most of all, the blessing of the spirits and the ancestors of the place in order that we and our ancestors and all the unseen holy can work together to create such a thing of beauty that it feeds the whole universe.

This is not just a small question, or a question of great spiritual weight. It is also a question of money, of pragmatics- can we afford to pay the mortgage? Where do we find more money to put in at the beginning so there is less to pay over the long haul (interest rates being what they are)? How do we build a healing arts practice that actually flourishes and feeds us, not only metaphorically, but literally. How do we build a life and can we do it there? And why there and not somewhere else? If we stop looking now, perhaps we have missed the right house just around the next corner? This is only the third house we have actually looked at, shouldn't we wait and see a few more?

Or is it just a matter of choosing? Of saying, ok, there is this place, offered to us, brought to us by the owners who want to sell it to us. Here is a place that for our practice and the Zusammen Center for Healing Arts is incredibly well situated. A house that is well connected to Frankfurt, in a beautiful area, with potential community and not too far from our friends. Let's just do it and get to work. Let's just decide this will work and go leaping into the future. Flying is possible, but one must leap away from everything one knew, all ideas, visions of how something would or should or could. One must be willing to risk everything to gain everything. One gets out only what one puts in, which could be everything. One can fly, but one must risk the dying and trust in the phoenix' flight out of the ashes. One can only trust in the holy, the divine, and one's own heart. The rest must be offered wholly and totally. Flying is possible when one has the couer-age, the heart, to leap. And before the leap, looking down from these heights, thinking oh, no, I can't jump out into that, it is too high, too vast, too big, too everything I have wished for, too everything is possible, too there are no excuses anymore, too there are no safety nets, one gets a bit dizzy.

To buy a house

is a very great thing indeed. And scary, and exhilarating, and in turns full of doubt and confusion and followed by blinding insight and vision. We don't know yet if this is the one. But someone showed up and said that they are selling a house and they would like to sell it to us. And it doesn't have very much land attached to it, but we can rent land for the fields and sheep with a right of refusal if the owners decide to sell. We go on Sunday for cake and to look around and see the area more and go swimming nearby (!) in the forest (!) and walk in the fields and see how it feels.

But if all goes well, we would buy this house and the dream/vision will have officially begun. Chickens, sheep and dog to follow. And no more vacations for a while. So everyone has to come visit us! There is a guest room available in exchange for help in the garden, which now is full of grass. And there are so many ideas! instead of my own healing herbs garden, i would start a community one in the area. I would put in an horno and we would have a small seasonal restaurant in our courtyard, and we would start fundraising for the girls, and on and on...so, the plans just change and mutate according to what we are being offered and given. Which in this case could be a house with a separate practice space attached- for bodywork, tai chi, chi gong, singing, herbs, homeopathy...

Life is full right now, and I have no idea what will happen next. We hear from the Bank next week about how much it would cost each month for mortgage and insurance and then we see if we can afford it. Everything is possible. (House on the left, workshops and stalls on the right.)

Priesthood

I was talking with a friend the day before yesterday about religion and spirituality and church and priesthood. He is thinking about starting a church for folks who don't fit into and don't want to fit into any religious box. A place for folks to come together and then drift away again after having a place in which to reconnect to source. I wished him always great invisibility, and that no one would make of him the charismatic center of the center. I've seen how that ruins people. Who said that?- absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Another friend has recently ordained and it took me several days or maybe weeks to write to him because my own past was too much in front of my eyes and heavy on my heart to be able to write a limpid "congratulations, how wonderful" and leave it at that.

Here is an excerpt from my email to him:

I did not write, but I thought of you on the day you ordained... for my own person, i am at a place in my life where it is clear to me that it does not serve for me to be a priest in a traditional way, and I did not know how to write to you of these things on that day, when your own ordination was so fresh and new and beautiful and strong within you. I wanted you to have that time without writing something that would seem, on the surface, to contradict what you have just undergone. Which i do not, actually, contradict, it is only that I now have a more trickster, backwards, underworld approach to it all.

I
 no longer put on my robes or shave my head or sit zazen, but that does not mean i do not live my vows every day. It is just that there is absolutely no recognizable form. My life has its own form and shape and container in which i try to express beauty and share my gifts. i strive to be patient (a life long process of learning), gentle, kind, wild, powerful, strong, creative, and respectful of all life. This is what i wish for you as well. No matter what form it takes- and it may take this zen form for the rest of this lifetime and it may not-i wish for you that you always live beyond the form, bigger than it, not beholden to any dogma but only to the urgings and wisdom and calling of your own wild soul. I hope that you are a priest always in the temple of your own heart… i wish for you that you do not lose the myriad facets and jewel-like beauty of your you-ness in all that black cloth, but that you become even more you, more brightly alive in your you-ness with each passing day… honor the teacher within you, always, he will never steer you wrong.

 So, congratulations on passing through this threshold, this next initiation in your life. I am proud of you, you are still "doin' it", opening up your life to the depths of source.

                                    -----------------------

The truth of the matter is, I think the time for priests is over. I cannot now put on my robes and fill that role, because I do not see any meaning it. I see no reason to uphold the tradition of Zen, which comes at the expense of women, through a male Japanese lineage. Culturally beautiful though it is, it doesn't have anything to do with my life here, in Germany. And though there was great and immense and deep value in my having undergone the training I did, there is at this time not a reason for me to continue to carry the dogma of the tradition around. Whether or not I will return to the teachings of the Buddha as a practitioner and student remains yet to be seen. I do not know where my spiritual path will lead. But I do know that I have been cured of wanting to be someone's priest. That role seems doomed to failure- both socially, spiritually, and societally. I do not see a reason for it as a meaningful way for the development of my own path and for the releasing of habits, fears, infantilisms, wounds, and hierarchies within my own or anyone else's mind.

My deep and abiding vow has been and always will be to love all beings. Said another way, to be always in love with life and her myriad expressions. To see the holy in all things and to offer beauty to feed that which feeds me, namely the divine. I seek now only, as the write Herman Hesse wrote, to listen to the whisperings of my blood. Here is a portion of the prologue from the book Demian, a book which deeply affected me as a teenager, which expresses well that which I have attempted to express. (Read Hesse's word "man" as gender neutral for person/human being.)

...I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?

…Yet, what a real living human being is made of seems to be less understood today than at anytime before, and men—each one of whom represents an unique and valuable experiment on the part of nature—are therefore shot wholesale nowadays. If we were not something more than unique human beings, if each one of us could really be done away with once and for all by a single bullet, storytelling would lose all purpose. But every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and re-markable point at which the world's phenomena intersect,only once in this way and never again. That is why everyman's story is important, eternal, sacred; that is why everyman, as long as he lives and fulfills the will of nature, is wondrous, and worthy of every consideration.

…I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. 1 have been and still am a seeker, hut I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me.

…Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself. Yet each one strives to become that—one in an awkward, the other in a more intelligent way, each as best he can. Each man carries the vestiges of his birth—the slime and eggshells of his primeval past—with him to the end of his days. Some never become human, remaining frog, lizard, ant. Some are human above the waist, fish below. Each represents a gamble on the part of nature in creation of the human. We all share the same origin, our mothers; all of us come in at the same door. But each of us—experiments of the depths—strives toward his own destiny. We can understand one another; but each of us is able to interpret himself to himself alone.
                                                           -------------------
Enough said. Until next time.

because there are so many things I don't want to do right now...

 i am procrastinating, but  as creatively as possible.

I should do the dishes, pack, clean the house, make phone calls, etc. But it is late and i worked almost 12 hours today standing up the whole time and i hurt all over. So, i think it is ok to procrastinate, a little.

My favorite way f procrastinating at the moment is looking up cool stuff on the internet, checking people's blogs, and watching gourmet's diary of a foodie, which i have mentioned before.

The fun thing is, we are going to Belgium tomorrow to visit friends for the long weekend. And I should be excited about packing, but I have ti find a suitcase and empty it out first in order to be able to pack. And that means moving the bed frame from in front of the attic door and climbing up into the now growing dark attic and finding a suitcase, lugging it down the stairs, turning on the bottom step 180 degrees to deposit my disgusting attic only shoes on the top step so they don't come into the house. Then I have take out whatever is in it- winter clothes, a duvet, blankets, whatever else- and put it somewhere. Then I actually have to pack the things I want to bring, which require looking through my closet and actually making decisions about what i want to wear in two days time. Which I hate. I think packing for a short trip is worse than for a long one, because you don't want to bring too much and there fore have to plan ahead of time what to wear. The only thing I plan ahead of time is food, sometimes days in advance.

Like for my new job, for instance. I started cooking at  a little health food store cafe today (not having anything to do with the other health food store or that cafe across the courtyard) at a farm. I made Zucchini Pancakes, pepper and eggplant sauce ( a la ratatouille), green salad, a big plum cake (german not english), and an apple wine cake. I had all of that planned last friday. Easy peasy. Clothing? not really.

But the important thing is we are going away for a few days and we are going to visit two dear friends who just moved to Brussels. And they are foodies, so we have, of course, already planned a large part of the menu. We're going to try dosas, he is going to make fresh Spaetzle, which I have not yet had, she is making a soup tomorrow night for which i should bring cilantro, and we are going out to breakfast, so that leaves only a few meals to maybe go out and eat something belgian, or give our bellies a rest and eat a salad.

Ok, enough procrastinating, time to pack the ingredients for dosas and rummage around up there in the waning light for a suitcase.....au revoir!

A Whole New World

Suddenly, we are discovering the Hochtaunuskreis, which is North and West from Frankfurt. The land there is beautiful, there are rail and bus connections to Frankfurt, the people there would have enough money to be clients of ours, we would still be able to keep our connections with friends and we would not be too far from mama and papa. Houses, jobs, friends, many things are coming together to show us the way. Slowly but surely. The hunt for the house and land continues at a slower but deeper pace. We look at houses and learn about what we want and don't want in terms of land, roofs, number of bedrooms, barns, workshops and stalls, and all the myriad things about owning a house here in Germany. Not to mention our financial needs and responsibilities and demands and opportunities. And we are praying and setting intention and learning the difficult lesson of following through. Being an adult, it would seem, means be responsible for ones ideas and visions, careful about what one brings into the world- be it children or plans and visions- and then maintaining care and support and giving the time and energy it all needs to keep running along.

It seems to me that being an adult is an ongoing learning that never finishes. While we were at the Zen center, we learned about being an adult emotionally and spiritually. We learned about maturation and we did mature. Now that we are "on the outside" as it were, we are learning about being an adult in the "real world". This business of leaving home to seek one's true self seems for now not so current as leaving home to seek one's fortune. How is it that we live in this very capitalist/consumerist world while keeping our souls alive, while keeping our ideals alive (albeit allowing them to be tempered by the fires of our real lives), nourishing our dreams, and staying in touch with source. This seems to be the greatest question, how to be fully sensuously embodied, spiritually fluent and deep, and psychically whole, while caring for the next generation. In short, how to be an adult. Which this process of looking for a house is giving us the opportunity to learn. the next opportunity, that is, for the next step of the way. Having to learn this lesson is sometimes painful, sometimes joyful, sometimes like coasting the bike downhill, and sometimes like riding a bike uphill through the Alps pulling my entire family behind on a trailer.

How do we stay present for our own truth while being present for the truth of others even if, and especially when, the truths seem apparently opposed or painfully contradictory. How to speak up in a way that does not shame, blame, or condescend to the other person's experience of truth, but also honors the experience of the person speaking. How to listen deeply to someone else's pain when in the midst of some chaos, exhausted, difficult, pushed experience of one's own? In short, how to be an adult.

What seems to be offered here again and again is a new beginning, or a series of new beginnings, that have to do with selling food, community, cooking, and learning. We have begun a relationship with a new farm and their "Hofladen" or farm grocery shop, in which i may cook and bake and work in the shop and nic would work in the shop. New stories, new community, new beginnings. Seeing how things unfold and become the way we are taking. Responding to the offerings that are made and seeing what can be offered in return. And then taking the lesson and digesting it and moving out again into the world. Perhaps finding a place to "put down roots" figuratively and metaphorically. looking for a place for our sheep, for our garden, and for our home. Praying, and then seeing how the universe, the great mother, responds.

May we grow into adulthood, responding to and caring for our lives both psychically, and emotionally as well as spiritually and physically. That we bring all of these parts together through the work of our hands, bodies, hearts, and minds into a whole. May our journey of healing and maturation be a source of support for others to do the same. May it be so.

Goose Girl, part three

Finding the story to which one's life responds to, or the myth in which one plays a part, can be a helpful piece of soulwork and psychological work. If we use the story as a map of not only our unconscious but also of the role we are in at any given moment in our lives, we can employ the teachings of the ancient ones by listening more deeply to the stories that are passed down. What are the pearls that are wept? What is her true treasure that the Goose Girl inherits? What does it mean to be reunited with family, to forgive a wrong done, to ask for that forgiveness? What does it mean to be authentic to one's heart, one's life? What is authenticity? Let us see if the story can teach us...

But the fair maiden was sad. She sat down and wept bitterly. One tear after another forced itself out of her eyes, and rolled through her long hair to the ground.

There she sat, and would have remained sitting a long time, if there had not been a rustling and cracking in the boughs of the neighboring tree. She sprang up like a roe which has been overtaken by the shot of the hunter. Just then the moon was obscured by a dark cloud, and in an instant the maiden had put on the old skin and vanished, like a light blown out by the wind. She ran back home, trembling like an aspen-leaf. The old woman was standing on the threshold, and the girl was about to relate what had befallen her, but the old woman laughed kindly, and said, I already know all. She led her into the room and lighted a new log. She did not, however, sit down to her spinning again, but fetched a broom and began to sweep and scour. All must be clean and sweet, she said to the girl. But, mother, said the maiden, why do you begin work at so late an hour. What do you expect. Do you know then what time it is, asked the old woman. Not yet midnight, answered the maiden, but already past eleven o'clock. Do you not remember, continued the old woman, that it is three years to-day since you came to me. Your time is up, we can no longer remain together.

The girl was terrified, and said, alas, dear mother, will you cast me off. Where shall I go. I have no friends, and no home to which I can go. I have always done as you bade me, and you have always been satisfied with me. Do not send me away. The old woman would not tell the maiden what lay before her. My stay here is over, she said to her, but when I depart, house and parlor must be clean. Therefore do not hinder me in my work. Have no care for yourself, you shall find a roof to shelter you, and the wages which I will give you shall also content you. But tell me what is about to happen, the maiden continued to entreat. I tell you again, do not hinder me in my work. Do not say a word more, go to your chamber, take the skin off your face, and put on the silken gown which you had on when you came to me, and then wait in your chamber until I call you. But I must once more tell of the king and queen, who had journeyed forth with the count in order to seek out the old woman in the wilderness.

The count had strayed away from them in the wood by night, and had to walk onwards alone. Next day it seemed to him that he was on the right track. He still went forward, until darkness came on, then he climbed a tree, intending to pass the night there, for he feared that he might lose his way. When the moon illumined the surrounding country he perceived a figure coming down the mountain. She had no stick in her hand, but yet he could see that it was the goose-girl, whom he had seen before in the house of the old woman. Oho, cried he, there she comes, and if I once get hold of one of the witches, the other shall not escape me. But how astonished he was, when she went to the well, took off the skin and washed herself, when her golden hair fell down all about her, and she was more beautiful than anyone whom he had ever seen in the whole world. He hardly dared to breathe, but stretched his head as far forward through the leaves as he could, and stared at her. Either he bent over too far, or whatever the cause might be, the bough suddenly cracked, and that very moment the maiden slipped into the skin, sprang away like a roe, and as the moon was suddenly covered, disappeared from his sight.
Hardly had she disappeared, before the count descended from the tree, and hastened after her with nimble steps. He had not been gone long before he saw, in the twilight, two figures coming over the meadow. It was the king and queen, who had perceived from a distance the light shining in the old woman's little house, and were going to it. The count told them what wonderful things he had seen by the well, and they did not doubt that it had been their lost daughter. They walked onwards full of joy, and soon came to the little house. The geese were sitting all round it, and had thrust their heads under their wings and were sleeping, and not one of them moved. The king and queen looked in at the window, where the old woman was sitting quite quietly spinning, nodding her head and never looking round. The room was perfectly clean, as if the little mist men, who carry no dust on their feet, lived there. Their daughter, however, they did not see. They gazed at all this for a long time, until at last they took heart, and knocked softly at the window. The old woman appeared to have been expecting them. She rose, and called out quite kindly, come in. I know you already.
When they had entered the room, the old woman said, you might have spared yourself the long walk, if you had not three years ago unjustly driven away your child, who is so good and lovable. No harm has come to her. For three years she has had to tend the geese. With them she has learnt no evil, but has preserved her purity of heart. You, however, have been sufficiently punished by the misery in which you have lived. Then she went to the chamber and called, come out, my little daughter. Thereupon the door opened, and the princess stepped out in her silken garments, with her golden hair and her shining eyes, and it was as if an angel from heaven had entered. She went up to her father and mother, fell on their necks and kissed them. There was no help for it, they all had to weep for joy. The young count stood near them, and when she perceived him she became as red in the face as a moss-rose, she herself did not know why. The king said, my dear child, I have given away my kingdom, what shall I give you. She needs nothing, said the old woman. I give her the tears that she has wept on your account. They are precious pearls, finer than those that are found in the sea, and worth more than your whole kingdom, and I give her my little house as payment for her services.
When the old woman had said that, she disappeared from their sight. The walls rattled a little, and when the king and queen looked round, the little house had changed into a splendid palace, a royal table had been spread, and the servants were running hither and thither. The story goes still further, but my grandmother, who related it to me, had partly lost her memory, and had forgotten the rest. I shall always believe that the beautiful princess married the count, and that they remained together in the palace, and lived there in all happiness so long as God willed it. Whether the snow-white geese, which were kept near the little hut, were verily young maidens no one need take offence, whom the old woman had taken under her protection, and whether they now received their human form again, and stayed as handmaids to the young queen, I do not exactly know, but I suspect it. This much is certain, that the old woman was no witch, as people thought, but a wise woman, who meant well. Very likely it was she who, at the princess's birth, gave her the gift of weeping pearls instead of tears. That does not happen nowadays, or else the poor would soon become rich.

Goose Girl at the Well continues

We have moved the furniture around in our house so that I can have a space to do my bodywork here in the house! I am working internally and energetically with inviting clients into my life so that I can earn money doing bodywork in addition to working at the shop. Because, we have started looking for our land and house! Finally! And of course, there are many beautiful houses- but they are too far away, or are too expensive, or need too much renovating, or don't have any land. But the point is, we have started, which is amazing. And even if it takes the next year, which it may, we have finally gotten out of the wishing/longing/dreaming stage and moved into the "manifesting by doing" stage. So therefore, the massage table finding a home finally in our apartment and starting our practice together.

We are working with ideas for what to call the center, what to call my massage practice that I start now, what to call the line of herbal vinegars and salves i am making to sell. Which feels all really good. And Nic starts her Homeopathy training in September. To finally be beginning!

I am going to go make chocolate chip cookies for my father in law's birthday tomorrow while you read on in the story.

So, where were we in our story... having left the castle and found the witch gathering herbs and apples in the forests and meadows of the mountains,  the king's son has helped the old woman carry her things back to her little house where he has met a maid who he "would not fall in love with if she were thirty years younger". And so it continues...


In the meantime the old woman stroked and fondled her geese as if they were children, and then went into the house with her daughter. The youth lay down on the bench, under a wild apple tree. The air was warm and mild; on all sides stretched a green meadow, which was set with cowslips, wild thyme, and a thousand other flowers; through the midst of it rippled a clear brook on which the sun sparkled, and the white geese went walking backwards and forwards, or paddled in the water. "It is quite delightful here," said he, "but I am so tired that I cannot keep my eyes open; I will sleep a little. If only a gust of wind does not come and blow my legs off my body, for they are as rotten as tinder."
When he had slept a little while, the old woman came and shook him till he awoke. "Sit up," said she, "you cannot stay here; I have certainly treated you hardly, still it has not cost you your life. Of money and land you have no need; here is something else for you." Thereupon she thrust a little book into his hand, which was cut out of a single emerald. "Take great care of it," said she, "it will bring you good fortune." The count sprang up, and as he felt that he was quite fresh, and had recovered his vigor, he thanked the old woman for her present, and set off without even once looking back at the "beautiful" daughter. When he was already some way off, he still heard in the distance the noisy cry of the geese.
For three days the count had to wander in the wilderness before he could find his way out. He then reached a large town, and as no one knew him, he was led into the royal palace, where the King and Queen were sitting on their throne. The count fell on one knee, drew the emerald book out of his pocket, and laid it at the Queen's feet. She bade him rise and hand her the little book. Hardly, however, had she opened it, and looked therein, than she fell as if dead to the ground. The count was seized by the King's servants, and was being led to prison, when the Queen opened her eyes, and ordered them to release him, and every one was to go out, as she wished to speak with him in private.
When the Queen was alone, she began to weep bitterly, and said, "Of what use to me are the splendors and honors with which I am surrounded; every morning I awake in pain and sorrow. I had three daughters, the youngest of whom was so beautiful that the whole world looked on her as a wonder. She was as white as snow, as rosy as apple-blossom, and her hair as radiant as sunbeams. When she cried, not tears fell from her eyes, put pearls and jewels only. When she was fifteen years old, the King summoned all three sisters to come before his throne. You should have seen how all the people gazed when the youngest entered, it was just as if the sun were rising!
"Then the King spoke, 'My daughters, I know not when my last day may arrive; I will today decide what each shall receive at my death. You all love me, but the one of you who loves me best, shall fare the best.' Each of them said she loved him best. 'Can you not express to me,' said the King, 'how much you do love me, and thus I shall see what you mean?' The eldest spoke. 'I love my father as dearly as the sweetest sugar.' The second, 'I love my father as dearly as my prettiest dress.' But the youngest was silent. Then her father said, 'And you, my dearest child, how much do you love me?' 'I do not know, and can compare my love with nothing.' But her father insisted that she should name something. So she said at last, 'The best food does not please me without salt, therefore I love my father like salt.'

"When the King heard that, he fell into a passion, and said, 'If you love me like salt, your love shall also be repaid you with salt.' Then he divided the kingdom between the two elder, but caused a sack of salt to be bound on the back of the youngest, and two servants had to lead her forth into the wild forest. We all begged and prayed for her," said the Queen, "but the King's anger was not to be appeased. How she cried when she had to leave us! The whole road was strewn with the pearls which flowed from her eyes. The King soon afterwards repented of his great severity, and had the whole forest searched for the poor child, but no one could find her. When I think that the wild beasts have devoured her, I know not how to contain myself for sorrow; many a time I console myself with the hope that she is still alive, and may have hidden herself in a cave, or has found shelter with compassionate people. But picture to yourself, when I opened your little emerald book, a pearl lay therein, of exactly the same kind as those which used to fall from my daughter's eyes; and then you can also imagine how the sight of it stirred my heart. You must tell me how you came by that pearl."
The count told her that he had received it from the old woman in the forest, who had appeared very strange to him, and must be a witch, but he had neither seen nor heard anything of the Queen's child. The King and Queen resolved to seek out the old woman. They thought that there where the pearl had been, they would obtain news of their daughter.

The old woman was sitting in that lonely place at her spinning-wheel, spinning. It was already dusk, and a log which was burning on the hearth gave a scanty light. All at once there was a noise outside, the geese were coming home from the pasture, and uttering their hoarse cries. Soon afterwards the daughter also entered. But the old woman scarcely thanked her, and only shook her head a little. The daughter sat down beside her, took her spinning-wheel, and twisted the threads as nimbly as a young girl. Thus they both sat for two hours, and exchanged never a word. At last something rustled at the window, and two fiery eyes peered in. It was an old night-owl, which cried, "Uhu!" three times. The old woman looked up just a little, then she said, "Now, my little daughter, it is time for you to go out and do your work." She rose and went out, and where did she go?- over the meadows into the valley. At last she came to a well with three old oak trees standing beside it; meanwhile the moon had risen large and round over the mountain, and it was so light that one could have found a needle. She removed a skin which covered her face, then bent down to the well, and began to wash herself. When she had finished, she dipped the skin also in the water, and then laid it on the meadow, so that it should bleach in the moonlight, and dry again. But how the maiden was changed! Such a change as that was never seen before! When the gray mask fell off, her golden hair broke forth like sunbeams, and spread about like a mantle over her whole form. Her eyes shone out as brightly as the stars in heaven, and her cheeks bloomed a soft red like apple-blossom.

New beginnings

When a person can no longer remember what her blog looks like, then it has really been a long time since a post. The season has changed from Spring to Summer, Midsummer has past and the days grow shorter. The tomatoes  have grown huge, some taller than I am, and the fruits begin to turn red. The one eggplant that has grown from the 10 seeds we planted has three big beautiful purple flowers. The basil has been transplanted for the 4th time. The olive tree is growing really well, and the blackberries are ripe. I feel sometimes as though I am back in New Mexico with the rains we have been having in July. Although, the amount of rain would be the envy of the people and plants in the high desert. And it is summer vacation here, which means almost everyone is gone for another two weeks and everything is quiet.

Today we went blackberry picking, and I baked a cake with roasted hazelnuts, cinnamon, vanilla, and blackberries. And I prepared a huge pot of blackberries for making jam tomorrow- which means I sorted them and cooked them so that they don't mold and then tomorrow afternoon I will add pectin and sugar and put it all into many jars. I still have some blackberries left which I plan on eating tomorrow in a big bowl with cream. Or maybe I'll buy a jar of sour cherries and see if I can find some more red currants on my landladies' bush and make rote gruetze. I think I already wrote about that, but it is a fruit dessert made of red and black fruits, a bit of sugar, lemon zest, and corn starch. I have some sago somewhere, so maybe I'll use that.

There has been a trip to the U.S. in between posts and the beginnings of looking for land/house to buy for our vision- which I will detail in a later post. And I have begun writing a new performance piece based on the story of the Goose Girl at the Well, by the Brother's Grimm. I'll use Hildegard von Bingen's herbal medicines and some current something in the world politic/story. And I have begun my course, the ABC's of Herbalism, with Susun Weed. A few weeks ago a huge box arrived full of books for me! Hooray! Books about Herbs, it doesn't get much better than that. I just finished reading a section on medicinal trees- poplar, maple, elder, larch, ash, birch, and so on. And though the specific variety may be different, the same species of tree grows here as in the States, which makes it very convenient. New England, it turns out, was aptly named, as many of the trees were brought over, and others had family members already there.

Just had a bath, now for a piece of Blackberry cake dusted with cocoa. Enjoy part one of the Goose Girl at the Well:

There was once upon a time a very old woman, who lived with her flock of geese in a waste place among the mountains, and there had a little house. The waste was surrounded by a large forest, and every morning the old woman took her crutch and hobbled into it. There, however, the dame was quite active, more so than any one would have thought, considering her age, and collected grass for her geese, picked all the wild fruit she could reach, and carried everything home on her back. Any one would have thought that the heavy load would have weighed her to the ground, but she always brought it safely home. If any one met her, she greeted him quite courteously. "Good day, dear countryman, it is a fine day. Ah! you wonder that I should drag grass about, but every one must take his burden on his back." Nevertheless, people did not like to meet her if they could help it, and took by preference a roundabout way, and when a father with his boys passed her, he whispered to them, "Beware of the old woman. She has claws beneath her gloves; she is a witch."
One morning a handsome young man was going through the forest. The sun shone bright, the birds sang, a cool breeze crept through the leaves, and he was full of joy and gladness. He had as yet met no one, when he suddenly perceived the old witch kneeling on the ground cutting grass with a sickle. She had already thrust a whole load into her cloth, and near it stood two baskets, which were filled with wild apples and pears. "But, good little mother," said he, "how can you carry all that away?" "I must carry it, dear sir," answered she, "rich folk's children have no need to do such things, but with the peasant folk the saying goes, 'Don't look behind you, you will only see how crooked your back is!'"
"Will you help me?" she said, as he remained standing by her. "You have still a straight back and young legs, it would be a trifle to you. Besides, my house is not so very far from here, it stands there on the heath behind the hill. How soon you would bound up thither!" The young man took compassion on the old woman. "My father is certainly no peasant," replied he, "but a rich count; nevertheless, that you may see that it is not only peasants who can carry things, I will take your bundle." "If you will try it," said she, "I shall be very glad. You will certainly have to walk for an hour, but what will that signify to you; only you must carry the apples and pears as well."
It now seemed to the young man just a little serious, when he heard of an hour's walk, but the old woman would not let him off, packed the bundle on his back; and hung the two baskets on his arm. "See, it is quite light," said she. "No, it is not light," answered the count, and pulled a rueful face. "Verily, the bundle weighs as heavily as if it were full of cobblestones, and the apples and pears are as heavy as lead! I can scarcely breathe." He had a mind to put everything down again, but the old woman would not allow it. "Just look," said she mockingly, "the young gentleman will not carry what I, an old woman, have so often dragged along. You are ready with fine words, but when it comes to be earnest, you want to take to your heels. Why are you standing loitering there?" she continued. "Step out. No one will take the bundle off again."

As long as he walked on level ground, it was still bearable, but when they came to the hill and had to climb, and the stones rolled down under his feet as if they were alive, it was beyond his strength. The drops of perspiration stood on his forehead, and ran, hot and cold, down his back. "Dame," said he, "I can go no farther. I want to rest a little." "Not here," answered the old woman, "when we have arrived at our journey's end, you can rest; but now you must go forward. Who knows what good it may do you?" "Old woman, you are becoming shameless!" said the count, and tried to throw off the bundle, but he labored in vain; it stuck as fast to his back as if it grew there. He turned and twisted, but he could not get rid of it. The old woman laughed at this, and sprang about quite delighted on her crutch. "Don't get angry, dear sir," said she, "you are growing as red in the face as a turkey-cock! Carry your bundle patiently. I will give you a good present when we get home."
What could he do? He was obliged to submit to his fate, and crawl along patiently behind the old woman. She seemed to grow more and more nimble, and his burden still heavier. All at once she made a spring, jumped on to the bundle and seated herself on the top of it; and however withered she might be, she was yet heavier than the stoutest country lass. The youth's knees trembled, but when he did not go on, the old woman hit him about the legs with a switch and with stinging-nettles. Groaning continually, he climbed the mountain, and at length reached the old woman's house, when he was just about to drop. When the geese perceived the old woman, they flapped their wings, stretched out their necks, ran to meet her, cackling all the while. Behind the flock walked, stick in hand, an old wench, strong and big, but ugly as night. "Good mother," said she to the old woman, "has anything happened to you, you have stayed away so long?" "By no means, my dear daughter," answered she, "I have met with nothing bad. On the contrary, only with this kind gentleman, who has carried my burden for me; only think, he even took me on his back when I was tired. The way, too, has not seemed long to us; we have been merry, and have been cracking jokes with each other all the time."
At last the old woman slid down, took the bundle off the young man's back, and the baskets from his arm, looked at him quite kindly, and said, "Now seat yourself on the bench before the door, and rest. You have fairly earned your wages, and they shall not be wanting." Then she said to the goose-girl, "Go into the house, my dear daughter, it is not becoming for you to be alone with a young gentleman; one must not pour oil on to the fire, he might fall in love with you." The count knew not whether to laugh or to cry. "Such a sweetheart as that," thought he, "could not touch my heart, even if she were thirty years younger."

green thursday

even though i think it must have something to do with jesus, the title, for me, means plants. It means spring has returned and life is coursing through the world again. I always find it sort of strange that jesus should have been killed, or that the celebration (i know that is a weird word, but that is what they say in the churches), that the celebration of his death should be in the spring, so clearly when life has returned. Then, the celebration must actually be about the resurrection, the return to life. The new life reborn. The new life after releasing what has needed to pass away. We come through the winter time, grateful to have survived, to be alive, to return to the fields and gardens and forests to harvest plants and sow seeds, and smell the flowers blooming and watch the birds building nests and all of life bringing babies into the world.

Green thursday, for me, is about the tree of life, which yes, they did hang jesus on, but it is more about the tree than the person. Although, I think he was a fine person, or the stories of him anyway, teaching love and the refuge of peace, of kindness to one another. All of which we seem not to have learned. Which I tend to mourn this time of year. That the death of this one person is, firstly, the cause of millions of deaths in this world because stupid people have to fight over it. And second, that we continue to kill each other and this earth and all of the trees and starve each other and bomb each other and pollute absolutely every square inch of earth we can get our greedy hands on.

But green is life. Green is the return of what is living, of the possibility of love. Of the sun and the warmth and the planties in the garden. Green is the color of hope, which I have been told over and over again to abandon. Been told that hope just sets me up for disappointment, after hanging out with her younger sister expectation and her abusive parent, Greed. But Hope, I think, is actually the tiniest sliver of a promise that the human heart, and the spark of whatever is divine in all of life, can ignite the potential of all of us to go through the process of true maturation and forging in the fires of life's experience to burn up all that is raw material in our hearts in the fire of love. To let what needs to die, die, and make a space where the phoenix can rise up out of the ashes into new life.

"Our tools are better than we are. They grow better, faster than we do. They suffice to crack the atom, to command the tides. But they do not suffice for the oldest task in human history: to live on a piece of land without spoiling it." Aldo Leopold

Green Thursday, reminds me of Aldo Leopold's "green fire". He was out hunting, and shot and killed a wolf. "We reached the old wolf in time to watch a fierce, green fire dying in her eyes. I realized then, and I've known ever since; that there was something new to me in those eyes. Something known only to the wolf and to the mountain. I was young then, and full of trigger itch. I thought that because fewer wolves meant more deer, that no wolves meant a hunter's paradise. But after watching the green fire die, I sensed that neither wolf nor mountain agreed with such a view." A.L.

So maybe there we have the death of the christ. The death of the green fire, of the wild, of the indigenousness in all of us, of the genocide of people and cultures, and of the destruction of our land. Each day we watch the green fire die in our world, right in front of us. And our own heart dies slowly with it.

"We the pioneers have killed our wilderness. Some say we had to. Be that as it may, I am glad that i will never be young without wild country to be young in." A.L.

If I pray for anything, it is for us to see and remember and be awake to what is holy all around us. And to act from this realization in our own lives each day, in the particulars of life, and through these acts, be reborn, all of us dying on the tree of life, rather than killing Her. Sacrificing what is old and used and worn and what is beautiful and holy as an offering. Giving our whole lives to feed the holy, rather than trying to steal the green fire we see around us in what is left of the wilderness in the attempt to own it. When we try to control it, we kill it.

"We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect." A.L.

We have a great big Chestnut tree in the middle of our courtyard. Our neighbors have a dog called Wotan, and we are, after all, in germany. Bringing together wolves, offerings and sacrifices, poetry, and the holy, here is a bit of Norse, pre-christian mythology to balance the christian story of the next days...


Odin is the chief divinity of the Norse pantheon, the foremost of the Aesir. Odin is a son of Bor and Bestla. He is called Alfadir, Allfather, for he is indeed father of the gods. With Frigg he is the father of Balder, Hod, and Hermod. He fathered Thor on the goddess Jord; and the giantess Grid became the mother of Vidar.
Odin is a god of war and death, but also the god of poetry and wisdom. He hung for nine days, pierced by his own spear, on the world tree. Here he learned nine powerful songs, and eighteen runes. Odin can make the dead speak to question the wisest amongst them. His hall in Asgard is Valaskjalf ("shelf of the slain") where his throne Hlidskjalf is located.
From this throne he observes all that happens in the nine worlds.
The tidings are brought to him by his two raven Huginn and Muninn. He also resides in Valhalla, where the slain warriors are taken.
Odin's attributes are the spear Gungnir, which never misses its target, the ring Draupnir, from which every ninth night eight new rings appear, and his eight-footed steed Sleipnir. He is accompanied by the wolves Freki and Geri, to whom he gives his food for he himself consumes nothing but wine. Odin has only one eye, which blazes like the sun. His other eye he traded for a drink from the Well of Wisdom, and gained immense knowledge. On the day of the final battle, Odin will be killed by the wolf Fenrir.
He is also called Othinn, Wodan and Wotan. Some of the aliases he uses to travel icognito among mortals are Vak and Valtam. Wednesday is named after him (Wodan).
Amongst his gifts to us, his children, was the greatest of all: the gift of writing. To accomplish this Odin hung himself upside down upon the World Tree, [Tree of Life] the gigantic ash Yggdrasil (a compound meaning "terrible horse").
After nine days of fasting and agony, in which "he made of himself a sacrifice to himself", he "fell screaming" from the tree, having had revealed to him in a flash of insight the secret of the runes. Their initial manifestation took the form of eighteen powerful charms for protection, increase, success in battle and love-making, healing, and mastery over natural causes.
This story illustrates an important dynamic of the Northern pantheon, which did not allow for omnipotence - even Odin must pay his due. At Mimir's well, which lay deep under the roots of Yggdrasil, the World Tree, the god had earlier chosen to undergo an important forfeit. Odin paid with one eye for a single drink of the enchanted water. His mouthful granted him wisdom and fore-sight. It is due to this sacrifice that Odin's face is depicted with a straight line indicating an empty eye, or alternately, in a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low over the missing orb.
His quest for knowledge was never-ending. Upon his shoulders perched two ravens, Hugin ("Thought"), and Munin ("Memory"). These circled the Earth each day, seeing all, and then at night reported to Odin what they had learnt. He cherished them both, but particularly Munin, which seems to underscore the importance he placed on rune writing, record keeping, and honouring the heroic deeds of the past. There is another bird associated with Odin, the eagle. The god often transformed himself into this canny raptor, both to view the workings of the world and to intervene when an avian form was better suited to his ends.


(Thanks to crystalinks.com for the info on odin)

busy

someone said to me last night, after hearing what i have been up to these days, "you sound busy". To which I responded, "Yes, I am".

However, upon reflection, after a night's sleep, a beautiful long late breakfast with my wife, and working in the garden for an hour and a half, I would say, "I disagree, I am not busy, I am full. I am deeply in love with life. I feel the pulse of life and all of her moods coursing through me- love, anger, fear, passion, joy, compassion, curiosity, excitement, enthrallment and all of the others. All of them. And I want to do ever so many things because my love draws me to them! Singing, plant medicine, cooking, eating well, body work, working in the little shop I do, reading, praying, making beauty, working outside in the garden, growing plants especially vegetables and fruits, washing, spinning, dyeing wool, knitting, making fiber out of nettle and silk and cotton. walking outside in meadows and mountains and along streams and rivers, meeting with friends, going to concerts, plays, museums, visiting family. Practicing Tai Chi and Chi Gong and maybe Kung Fu. The list goes on and on. But I am not busy. I may be in perpetual motion, or even trying to do too many things. but I am not busy. I am full, totally completely in love and full with life and I want to experience it all. And I am afraid that I won't have enough time to do all the things I want to do and go and eat and play and dream and grow. How does a person choose? How does a person move forward into fullness, held, loved, caressed by life and brought into her potential, her power, her gifts that only she can, in her unique way, give?"

That is what I would say to the person now. I am not busy, I am in love.

April showers bring May flowers- and then I can look them up in my book.

The month of April has started and I have conveniently forgotten, or been too busy to, post on April 1st (April fools?)And then we were away and then working, and now there is today.

Today, I worked until 1pm and then gave a bodywork session and then took a nap (my most favorite pleasure on afternoons when I get home from work) and then I went out to shop. First, I bought two old german children's books for my god-nephew ("The Firetruck", and "Favorite Animal Stories") and a book on plant identification for me (What is Blooming There?) which is sorted by color of flower- white, red, blue, yellow and green/brown and then by number of petals- at most 4, 5, more than 5, and two identical sides. Then, I went to the mall (at least it is an outdoor mall) to buy small stickers to label my bottles of vinegars- egg shell, dandelion, and nettle, and oils- so far only wild leek, and tinctures-when I make them. I have been collecting wine bottles, juice bottles, jars, etc to make the mother tinctures and oils, etc. but I have only used little pieces of paper precariously resting on the lids. And I bought a spray bottle to water the plant babies (except tomatoes who hate having their leaves wet from anything other than rain. Tomatoes, by the way, which I cannot stop planting- we added two more varieties last weekend; German Stripe, which are green, and ones that we forgot what they were and only wrote "Tomatoes, red?" on the label (to which a friend said, when we told her, "that's like bananas, yellow")). Oh, and they were having a farmer's market outside of the mall and I bought two small dill plants and a roast chicken.

After shopping, I took the subway one stop from home and then got out and walked through a field full of trees, nettle, wildflowers, grasses, along the Urselbach- our little brook that runs through the town. I sat in the field, looking up flowers, and after identifying  herbs like Weisse Traubennessel, and Grosse Klette/Burdock, I walked home to practice Tai Chi.

On the food front, I am now working on the idea of an alkalizing diet/elimination diet, neither of which the foodie part of me wants to do, but which I think the Rosacea on my face is not so subtly telling me I need to. Rosacea is an hereditary skin disease with no known "cause" that can be mild to severe and is characterized by small veins appearing close to the surface of the face, pimples and/or pustules, and skin the texture of, oh, fine to middle grain sandpaper. I always thought I just had pimples that never went away, but apparently, I have Rosacea, which is, according to some, like a red warning light for the pancreas and liver. An alkaline diet can help both care for the internal organs as well as heal the skin. Apparently chocolate, sugar, red wine, cheeses, and certain fruits make Rosacea flare up. Then there is the Rosacea Diet, which is even more severe than the Atkins Diet- no sugar, no carbs,etc. based on the concept that sugar is the cause of Rosacea flare ups (Pancreas).Then, there is the concept of the Elimination Diet to determine food allergies, which can also cause flare ups, in which a person eats almost nothing for a month,  or at least none of the known allergens- wheat, gluten, fish, peanuts, soy, citrus fruits, strawberries, dairy products, sugar, honey, black tea, alcohol, etc. and then reintroducing things one at a time, three times a day for three days before moving on to the next food. Brutal, but possibly what I need to undertake. We'll see. But it only seems to be getting worse, my skin, especially eating the diet of bread, cheese, sausage, wine, and beer that I have been.

But don't get too worried, I'm still interested in eating well and deliciously and don't plan on being boring. So, tonight, when I came home, I ate corn tortillas (huge carbon footprint, they are flown over from mexico!) filled with roasted chicken, a salad of fennel, carrot, rucola, endive, and red lettuce, and sheep quark with wild leeks cut up in it. yum. Oh, and a glass of white wine.

fairy presents and a recipe

I got the most beautiful sweet fairy package in the mail from Susun Weed (and staff) with stickers on the outside that say "make tea not war" and little trillium stickers that say thank you! and Congratulations! on them. And I get to order books and cds as part of my course. I get to pick the cds and four of the books and then 4 books come with it. And I got the coursebook for the ABC of herbalism, which is structured as, of course, the abc's. And I received in the mail the herbal chart to hang on my wall from herbmentor.com that has common herbs, their actions, latin and family names, parts used and preparations best employed (poultice, tincture, tea, salve, etc). And we went this morning and harvested fresh nettles! I brought a basket I wove as an offering and we sang them a song as we harvested them. We'll eat them tonight on pizza- i am going to make a sourdough rye crust to rise while i work today. And then I want to make the nettle beer. But I don't think we have enough for that, I read on one of the recipes that we need 10 pounds! (here are some links to recipes for nettle beer- celtic recipes, selfsufficientish, the green chronicle ) So, Friday when we go back to Grosskrotzenburg I'll harvest more of them and dandelion leaves and or flowers. It was so beautiful to be in the forest, I have to find where I can get to some around here on foot, or at least not too far away on the train. I think these two plants, Nettle (Urtica Dioica) and Dandelion (Taraxacum Officianale)- through wild crafting leaves, flowers, seeds or roots, making medicines, wine, beer, yarn from the fibers, drying, cooking, etc. will keep me busy for the year. The other plants I want to study I will purchase and then I can add another plant or two next year to my wildcrafting repertoire. We start the ABC course with Aloe, so I need to find an aloe plant to buy.

And here is what I made for lunch today, it's a keeper:

Apple Endive salad

Slice the following thinly
3 endive (in german they are chicoree, which we call endive, the little, smooth, slightly fuzzy white/yellow heads of expensive salad green)
3 small potatoes, cooked
1 apple

leaves of green salad,torn into bite size pieces
100g of old gouda, grated
dressing: salt, pepper, smoked salt, olive oil, lemon juice, tarragon vinegar

Toss it all together and eat. serves two. Unfortunately again we ate it too fast to take a picture. I usually remeber only at about the last mouth full.

I'll try to remember to take a picture of the nettle pizza tonight before we eat it!

Sharing Recipes and Seeds

I planted more tomatoes today- Japanese Truffle and Black and Red Zebra. We got the seeds at the garden fair at the botanical garden in frankfurt. And I also planted biodynamic grown sugar pea seeds in pots, because our whole garden needs to be in pots this year. Window boxes and pots outside in the courtyard. I am looking forward to figuring out how to grow peas around a window, or squashes, for example, hanging in net bags around our window...i'll need to dig out my permaculture books and look at the suggestions for planting lots of things in very little space. Vertical potato beds in barrels and so forth. Oh, and the other tomatoes I started are up and growing their first two true leaves and the chile negro has finally sprouted! The jalapeno and grapes are still keeping their heads buried, but I have confidence that something will happen.

It has been so warm here recently, although I am enjoying the sun (SUN!!!) immensely, I am also more than a little worried that it is so warm so soon and that the apple trees and other fruit trees might begin their blooming way before the last frost, thereby risking the fruit crop this year. But that doesn't mean I didn't pack or first picnic today and meet nic after work to eat egg salad on light rye sourdough with herb de provence mustard and a spinach salad. I did, and we enjoyed ourselves thoroughly, laying the in the sunshine afterwards with our shoes and socks off, wiggling our toes in their new found freedom. The air always feels so luscious on my toes when they get to be in it again outside after the winter.

I have been experimenting with flan making lately, which I think I now have down. It only took 10 tries, I think. Not only did I have to figure out the ingredients- goat milk maybe 2 cups, eggs three medium, sugar maybe 1/4 cup, cinnamon 1 tsp and vanilla, or chai spices steeped in the milk first. And of course the right process and order of steps, but I had to learn my whole oven, which still seems to be way way hotter than every other oven I have ever worked with. Although doing this all in another system of measure is of course difficult because it is hard to compare. But the recipe I had said that it should bake at a relatively high temperature, I think 325 F for 50 minutes! In my oven that means 150 centigrade for 25 minutes.  Anyway, the recipe, sort of: First, start the caramel on the stove (sugar and water) in the dish you want to make your flan in, turn on the oven with the big glass pyrex dish in it already and get the water boiling in the cooker. Then, in another pot, heat the milk on medium with the sugar, vanilla, and cinnamon in it (unless making chai spiced flan, then you actually have to do this step first so the spices have long enough to give their flavor. Next, beat the eggs in another bowl. When the water is boiled in the cooker and the milk is warm but not boiling over, pour the milk into the eggs while mixing continuously with a whisk. Pour the whole thing now into the warm caramel, very gently, so that you don't end up with a hole in the caramel. Place the flan into the pyrex dish and then pour the boiling water into the pyrex dish so that 2/3 of the flan pan is submerged (now you have made your bain marie). Now, wait and let it cook. But it should not be too hot, your oven or your flan will puff and turn cakey. It should also not bake too long because either it will turn cakey, or the top layer will become hard and rubbery.

But yesterday, or maybe the day before, I had some apples at hand that needed eating, actually, cooking. and i thought, oh my gosh, tarte tatin and flan all together in the same pan! So I made my pastry- two parts flour to 1 part butter, pinch or two of salt and cold water and put it in the fridge while I caramelized the apples in butter and sugar and then made the flan filling and got the oven and so forth ready as above. Then, i poured the flan over the apples, covered it with the pastry and baked it. I got all confused and forgot I could actually lay the dough into the pan and used a pie tin instead so it would all be the same level, which did not fit quite right into the bigger pan i tried to use rather than my pyrex, and so the water did not even touch the pie plate, and i had no idea how long to bake it given the crust. But still, it was AMAZING! and of course, I have to make it again. No picture, sorry, we ate it too fast. but when I get it really right, then I'll have to take one and post it.

Which reminds me, my boss at the restaurant said that we don't give out recipes, because if the customer thinks that it tasted good, we want them to come back and eat it here, with us. no matter if they were here from really far away for a seminar and won't be around again, if ever for me to make whatever it was I made that they liked. And I thought, how sad, I have always, always given out my recipes- heck, I just gave you all my flan and my tarte tatin/flan recipe- because the point is, let's all eat good food, we deserve to eat food that is delicious and that inspires us to be more alive and more in love. And, food should be eaten together and cooked together and for one another. And, recipes, even if you share them, never, ever taste the same when someone else makes them, even if they use the same recipe, because the hands, heart, soil, ingredients, and ovens of every person are so different. And Listening to Susun Weed about why she uses Simples, that is infusions of just one herb, as medicine, is that they are expressly NOT proprietary blends. They are easy to find, grow, or buy, and easy to duplicate, so that the power of healing oneself and one's family is in every one, not just in some doctor or specialist. The simple also allows us to notice what effect the herb is having and whether it is helping or not. It is a practice of, as Starhawk says, power with, not power over. I mean, when it really comes down to it, is one bowl of chick pea curry really going to make or break the bank? No, but sharing a recipe and giving a person the gift of the story of where that recipe comes from, and how they got it, and passing it on through making it, to others, and maybe sharing the recipe further on. That means something, carries truth and realness in it. It is a handmade thing that can be shared. Like seeds, growing them and giving them away, or trading them, or selling them, so that everyone can grow a fabulous delicious Japanese truffle tomato, if they can gather some earth and a container to grow them in. The whole GMO seed/monsanto/genetic ownership thing has now come to Germany, by the way, regarding where bees collect pollen and who owns the plants, and in the case of big business, who owns the seeds or the patent on the seeds that the bees visit. Can you imagine anything more stupid? But that is a whole other blog post.

Up next in the recipe adventure: Nettle Beer and Sourdough Rye Zwiebelkuchen. Recipes and stories to follow.

Herbal classes

So I have taken my first three weeks of botany class and learned about Kingdom, class, monocots and dicots, and how to begin to identify plants by the flowers- regular or irregular- looking at petal number, color, shape of the leaf, and how the veins run. I've made nettle infusions to drink every day. I've washed my hair with nettle infusion. I've dunked my nails in horsetail infusion every other day and warm olive oil between. I've bought kilograms of Nettle, Dandelion, Oatstraw, and Echinacea. I've collected dandelion leaves and made my first medicinal vinegar which, as Susun Weed says, has to be topped off the first few days because the fairies come along and try it. I've made egg shell vinegar for the calcium and watched the vinegar foam. I've had the beginnings of impatience and the beginnings of understanding. I have been reading my books and studying my first three herbs- Horsetail, Nettle, and Dandelion. Check out this website to see amazing paintings from 1885 of plants of Germany and Switzerland by Otto Wilhelm Thomee. The Nettle below is from his collection. I have learned some and forgotten some. I have had amazing soul dreams and have heard my body tell me exactly what it wants to eat or drink- for example, buckwheat, fresh orange juice, parsley, rye bread. And today I signed up for the ABC's of Herbalism with Susun Weed. They'll send me my books and then I can begin.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am finally doing what I have been wanting to do since I was a child and been afraid to do. I am not really sure why I have been afraid, but I was. So I never really talked about it and never took seriously the idea of studying herbs, but now it seems all very normal and about time and I can go into the apothecary here and just buy an herb. Or int he spice shop. Or in the tea shop. Or in my little health food store that i work in. Please check out the Berglandkraueter folks. They have the most beautiful herbs. And they are not too far from here in north Hessen. Hooray!

My uncle, who is my benefactor for this course, has given me the chance to realize this life long yearning. It is quite a thing to be able to do something that one has been secretly longing for since one's childhood. I would play dress up with my friends and then part of whatever adventure we were on thereafter always involved someone becoming ill, or enchanted and needing a magic potion of some sort to be cured. We would gather things in the garden and then troop up to my mother's medicine cabinet in her bathroom and use all sorts of lotions to make it gooey and wet. For some reason, this was a very important part of it. And we always traveled to our magical land on the swing hanging from the maple tree in the back yard. One had to stand up on the swing, however, and go two at a time on it. When I was playing alone, then I made someone up to be with me.

So that is my update on herbal learning and medicine making.